Friday, 21 October 2016

The details of Klity Creek in Kanchanaburi by Khun Ploenpote Atthakor in The Bangkok Post article this week “The Environment loses” are horrifying.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1113929/environment-loses-as-rays-of-hope-dim

Not just the pollution itself and impact on the environment and people but the delays and cover-up instead of cleanup.

For the sediment still to be contaminated even after the payouts to the Klity Creek villagers is mortifying.

As with the stingray fish deaths in the Mae Klong river – now confirmed as ethanol pollution - and the aptly named Pong river pollution in Khon Kaen cited by Khun Ploenpote it’s a contamination price that can be paid in blood through the generations with illness and genetic deformities for the years ahead.

I remember the sterling work some years ago by a Thai human rights lawyer in taking up the Klity Creek case - unfortunately a rare instance in UK with the legal system mired in the fraud and corruption of the BHS scandal of billionaire Philip Green and his assistant Lord Grabiner of One Essex Court.

Here in Kent we’ve had similar toxic incidents with the jaw-dropping contamination by Infratil plc of New Zealand, with the directors and, even worse, the TDC and KCC councils removing the required pollution monitors and faking the data for almost a decade from 2005 onwards.

In a bizarre twist, the airport was closed in 2014 after a hasty $1 selloff six months earlier to Ann Gloag the owner of Stagecoach buses in UK and NZ, and one of Scotland’s richest women.

But still no monitoring or fines under Gloag before she closed the airport.

Even more peculiarly, a parliamentary investigation into Gloag’s murky ownership of the site and plans for a mega-housing estate and New Town proved less than clear.

Infratil’s directors also hastily sold off their other airports in Scotland and Germany and NZ, leaving only Wellington Airport, surely now Asia’s most dangerous airport run by directors Fitzgerald, Clarke and Bogoievski and Baker:

https://infratil.com/about-us/people/

While UK or Thai pensioners might want to question any retirement plans to Australia and Infratil’s other businesses given their rather murderous approach to pollution and monitoring:

https://infratil.com/our-businesses/

In my politics role, I’ve made it a manifesto point to extradite the Infratil directors back to UK to stand trial: orange jumpsuit, leg-irons and free trip back handcuffed to an FBI agent if UK police prove ineffective.

While UKIP and Nigel Farage before their defeat in the South Thanet election and numerous resignations made it their flagship – indeed only – policy to reopen Manston, as did Craig Mackinlay and Roger Gale the Tory MP’s both facing calls for resignations and now enmeshed in a rape scandal with one of their aides.

Manston and Infratil is a toxic mix of idiocy, coverup, pandering to the crowd and parachute politics that ended just last week with a report citing such a policy as foolish in the extreme.

But still no public debate or comment on the cancer effect – and this really is hard to believe – the airport built on the East Kent drinking water aquifer.
I know, you couldn’t make it up.

As with numerous banned flights from the EU visiting both Manston and Ostend airport – Thai readers may remember Viktor Bout – the basis of the movie Lord of War -being extradited from Bangkok:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/world/asia/17thai.html

Bout’s rat-run of guns and drugs and diamonds via Ostend airport is all the more horrifying with toxic discharge of cluster bombs rearing their ugly head again in Yemen and Syria after the bloody harvests of Cambodia and Laos.

If Wellington is Asia’s most dangerous airport then Ostend, with Manston and Lydd, is the European equivalent – even IranAir sanction busting on the former director Charles Buchanan’s watch.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15702685

Klity Creek and Mae Klong must surely form the basis of Climate Change and anti-pollution policies for Thailand 4.0?

If UK is failing on pollution, then Flint, Michigan is a faint glimmer of hope with city officials arrested and jailed.

The latter a mercury incident as we unfortunately also have in Kent with Thor mercury – a factory banned for polluting its workers yet remaining open. For 30 years. A damning indictment of the Environment Agency and Health and Safety Agency with the factory only being closed after catching fire and sending a toxic plume of smoke into the air.

As Khun Ploenpote points out it's too easy for government officials to pretend nothing happened, and do nothing and keep picking up a paycheck and pension.

The Thor mercury site in Cato Ridge in South Africa is facing similar problems of workers and residents poisoned and rivers polluted.

With Thailand in mourning for King Bhumibol and his sterling work on the environment as well as sports and jazz, surely a fitting legacy to his memory would be to develop a CleanUp Committee for pollution sites in Thailand and UK? Recording the pollution is of little use without cleanup.

And with Princess Sirindhorn active in her now role as UN Ambassador for FAO surely such royal oversight would protect Thailand’s – and UK’s – farmland from such pollution scandals?

The latest Cambodian malnutrition report in the International Journal of Nutrition and Food Sciences authored by Pheak Chhoun etc, is horrifying, with 45% of children stunted and 20% of women under age 49 are malnourished, as detailed in The Cambodia Daily last week:

In my UK political campaign “Stop the Pollution. Stop the Corruption, Stop the Construction.” (@timg33) I’ve urged the reinstatement of the UK’s DFID aid budget to Cambodia of c.$20M. And to create UK Parliament APPG group to focus in on UK support for Cambodia and Laos – indeed my UK parliamentary manifesto is the only one ever written in Cambodian too!

With one of the world’s largest aid budgets, and the only G20 nation to achieve the UN target of 0.7% GNI in aid, it’s a small step for the UK to assist Cambodia as one of the world’s poorest nations, from its annual DFID budget of c.$18BN (that’s billions not millions!).

The loss of such aid and LDC status, or even UN insect protein programmes, could only worsen Cambodian malnutrition and open the door back to the dark days of the famines of the 1970’s.

-Cambodia and UNSDG30-

In the 21st century hunger and malnutrition are not only now essentially forbidden under the UNDSDG30 goals, but are not a factor of production and finance, merely transport.

It’s monstrous that Cambodia – and indeed Laos and Myanmar- should be facing hunger again, rather than drowning in a tsunami of ASEAN rice.
While Cambodia must also surely welcome the appointment of Thailand’s dynamic Princess Maha Sirindhorn as UN Ambassador for the UN-FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation, and as a complement to Cambodia’s dynamic royals such as Princess Soma, and her sterling work in promoting Cambodia in USA.

And Khmer rice exports within and from Cambodia – and Thai surplus rice imports or Australian milk to help stave off malnutrition – can only improve with the fast-forward development of rail links and bridges from Bangkok to Battambang and Phnom Penh and then onto HCMC.

-Kent and Cambodia-

While here in Kent, near London, we could easily build stronger links with Cambodia with our 4 universities and 400 schools and dozens of language schools, for exchanges and scholarships - with UK Chevening scholarships already trebled as of last year.

Even heritage and religious links with Canterbury Cathedral and Angkor Wat are viable, and the temples of the Royal Road.

My Surin Village School Charity has already built its first school in Isaan, Thailand and looking to build schools in Battambang and Siem Reap too.

While in my Sincerity Advertising and PR role, it’s clear to me that the alphabet soup of IMF, ADB and UN etc could be even more active on malnutrition with Lucky Iron Fish initiatives with Unilever to prevent anaemic malnutrition or Lifebuoy soap for public health and Pandemic improvements through handwashing.

The Lifebuoy Reach 5 activity is already a huge CSR success in Kenya, simply waiting to be replicated throughout Cambodia.

The newly-opened Sihanoukville port to Phnom Penh railway should also help speed up Cambodia’s rice exports to UK and EU supermarkets and Cambodian silk and clothes to the UK High St.

While Cambodia’s 4M foreign tourists must be a key focus for UK growth with 1M UK tourists – the largest Western group - already visiting nearby Thailand just a short bus or plane – and soon train - trip away.

Surely it’s time for greater activity on UK-Cambodia programmes?

Tim Garbutt is director of Sincerity advertising agency, Surin Village School charity, first school built in Isaan and plans to build 1,000 per year, MP candidate for East Kent to build better relations with Thailand, Cambodia and ASEAN.

More than a few nations, including UK, should be paying close attention to a new ASEAN tiger. 7% growth one of the highest in the world at the moment (and the same in Cambodia) could be dismissed as starting from a low base and decades of isolation and a centralised economy.

But something far more structurally innovative is in place with Laos one of the first – if not the first – nation to place the UNSDG30 global goals into its national policy, and the 5 year National Plan to 2020.

And an adaptation of the goals has been approve by the outgoing UN Secretary-General ban Ki-Moon with a Goal 18 on UXO to have Laos demined, zero landmine casualties and existing casualties cared-for by 2025.

No mean feat as a goal, with even President Obama on the first-ever US presidential visit, recognising Laos as the world’s most bombed nation during the French and American wars of the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s. The deluge of B52 bombing raids, napalm strikes, Agent Orange deformities and cluster bombs yielding a deadly harvest even now.

For UK, the failure to implement the UNSDG30 as a part of national policy is an astonishing oversight. Especially as shown by Laos, and also Philippines, the global goals are meant to be tailored to each nation’s specific circumstances.

##Kent rice?##

In UK, malnutrition doesn’t have the same connotations as in say Sudan – a potbelly and diabetes are more likely from obesity than malnutrition - but certainly that goal could be adapted to say evaluate children relying on food banks etc. A shocking failure for a G20 nation and the world’s 5th largest economy.
As an aside, the recent WFP report on malnutrition in Cambodia is horrifying with 5M stunted and a GDP cost of c.2%.

The UK can rightly be proud of its DFID work on Third World aid and achieving the UN target of 0.7% GNI. And it’s not unreasonable to link aid to some UK national interests in say supporting the Commonwealth.

But the ending of $20M in DFID aid to Cambodia, one of the world’s poorest nations, seems astonishing and likely to increase hardship in Cambodia with the end of LDC status.

That’s a potential danger in removing World Bank/IMF and ADB and AIIB grants and funds as well as DFID funds – and the excellent DIFD/MAG landmine activity in Phonsavan on the Plain of Jars. perhaps the world’s best small photography gallery and museum?

Here in Kent we may be short of rice-fields but the agricultural colleges of Hadlow and orchards of Pinebury, universities and colleges of Canterbury and Broadstairs, STEM science labs of Sandwich and Sittingbourne, and even more so the Veetee Indian rice mills are poised to support ASEAN trade.

##Lazy buffalo too?##

But isn’t Thailand also missing an opportunity with lazy Laos? And not just in adopting the UNSDG30 as part of the Thailand 4.0 national plans or bandying around insults as with the buffalo of Isaan?

For Thailand, especially Isaan, are culturally close to Laos. The 20M people of Isaan and 7M people of Laos make a significant trade bloc and ASEAN open borders allow easier migration and working status with Laos that say UK has struggled with EU and Brexit.

And much of that 7M Lao population is in the main cities along the length of the Mekong – literally a stone’s throw away from Thailand. Whether Vientiane opposite Nong Khai and Udon or Savannaket and Mukdahan, or Pakse and Ubon.

Surely an economic growth zone for Thailand and Laos could be facilitated with the various Australian Friendship bridges. A particularly natural and easy extension of OTOP trade programmes in say textiles or Thai and Lao tourism programmes, or the Creative Industries of pothole bathers of Tak and Khon Kaen and Buriram featured on the BBC too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-37485461

Palm would be a terrific hire for the new Sincerity office in BKK as she's clearly a shining light of Thailand's Creative Industries.

##Rice and easy does it?##

But rice – whether sticky or jasmine or red or black or any other permutation – must be crucial to both economies in general and especially Thailand from the Rice Pledging Schemes surpluses. Few would doubt the success of the recent rice exports to Iran and China, but surely Laos and Cambodia provide a natural and easy 22M people market – about the same size as Isaan - for surplus Thai rice especially against the backdrop of Cambodian malnutrition?

The ADB and World Bank must again be the simplest way to purchase up surplus Thai rice and provide humanitarian exports to its ASEAN near-neighbours in Cambodia and Laos and further afield in Philippines now a net importer of rice?

The debate around the best use of land for agriculture or forest or housing is a wider one, but redistributing existing surpluses before they waste must be paramount for Thailand and ASEAN? Consideration must surely be key for mutually supportive rice marketing programmes in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos – the UK for example having limited awareness, differentiation and distribution of the different rice stocks.

The new announcement of purity of Hom Mali rice must surely be a key factor for sales of Thai exports to USA and EU?

##Marketing Thailand and Laos stronger together##

Similar consideration could be given as to how Thai and Lao tourism is marketed in Europe and USA. Scotland and Iceland Tourism Boards for example are exploring synergies in their common Scandinavian heritage and package holidays and cruise ship events.

Certainly Thailand and Laos should be cooperating on multi-destination breaks for foreign visitors to increase holiday length and spend once the plane has touched down in Asia. While cruise ship Mekong breaks have potential as great as say Halong Bay.

And it would be natural and easy for AusAid to extend its sterling work on Mekong bridges through the 4,000 islands of Champasak and Southern Laos and into North East Cambodia for rail and road links through to HCMC and back through the markets of Aranyaprathet and Bangkok?

Even the Royal Road linking Isaan and Khmer and Southern Lao temples.

And downtown Battambang or Siem Reap or Paklay is a lot easier to reach than Tehran or Tianjin for rice trucks or an expansion of 7-11 or Circle K deliveries.
While the TPP link to USA, Canada and Latin America, link, from the deep sea port at Vinh requires only the briefest of rail-lines through to Vientiane and the nearby northern Isaan markets.

And, as an aside, surely Thailand as well as UK should be thinking, with the over-development of Phuket and Samui, of the sustainable development investment potential of the Mergui Archipelago and islands with the newly-democratic Myanmar of Aung San Suu Kyi?

A Phuket 2.0 as part of Thailand’s 4.0 work?

###Laos in the house##

Certainly the heartland of northern Isaan, central Laos and central Vietnam seems a stronger economic trade route than either Dawei or a Chinese rail link through the empty northern highlands of Laos. Here in East Kent we’ve unfortunately seen the white elephants of Roads to Nowhere and empty ports and ghost cities of Medway.

While the markets of Yunnan are more easily reached though the existing railway from Hanoi or a short extension from Myitkyina. A tourism route through the Laos highlands would be less appealing as half of that 800km would be in tunnels, rendering any views of the Switzerland of Asia as rather dull to say the least.

While the road to democracy for Thailand in 2017 has been signposted with the Charter Referendum, the differing results from Isaan, the North and Deep South have highlighted the schisms in Thai society.

Thailand has one of the most-centralised economies with over 80% of state funding, according to The Economist magazine, spent in Bangkok with obvious imbalances and frustrations in the rest of Thailand not befitting from such State funds.

A situation the UK has seen in the North-South Divide that HS2 and HS3 is designed to help rectify or the Whitehall out of Whitehall programmes such as Salford Media City. Or the frustrations highlighted in the Scottish referendum and concerns over Brexit in Wales and Northern Ireland.

For if Lazy Laos is something of a slightly racist cliché like the drunken Scots then perhaps we should all be drinking from that still, given that Lao UNDSDG30 work and Scotland announced as one of the world’s most progressive nations last week.

And a peaceful and prosperous Thailand of the 21st century, and UK, could well benefit from the work of lazy Laos so far.

Saturday, 8 October 2016

The 50th Anniversary next year of the release of The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a key event for Kent.

The album itself marks an astonishing achievement for the Great British Creative Industries in joining together Pop Music and Art for the first time.

But as with this year’s celebration of Shakespeare’s 400th Anniversary it could be a dashed-off damp squib rather than a psychedelic firework lighting up the world all next year from Liverpool to Los Angeles.

Have you heard of any events yet? I haven’t.

The Kent Beatles you say?

The album cover by Peter Blake symbolising the end of the era of the Fab Four as their incarnation of Sergeant Pepper’s band stands over the grave of the Moptops.

The album being the first to print the lyrics of the songs as works of art in themselves.

And, whisper it quietly, it wasn’t even their best album.

Rubber Soul or Revolver or even Help could be argued to be more cohesive or experimental.

Sergeant Pepper is too long at 13 tracks and too many fillers: Fixing a Hole? And too much of Macca’s music hall ditties: When I’m Sixty-Four?

And just two years later The Beatles ended.

But the full blossoming of Flower Power and psychedelia and hard rock and a pop music was something substantial and far more than showbiz or Tin Pan Alley ephemera.

Macca in a recent The Spectator interview described how the first iteration of the Pepper cover was a municipal flower clock. No doubt badly-done and over-budget if left to the council: we might still be waiting for the album to be released.

But what an album it would have been if it had been trimmed down to say 8 tracks – and this is where Kent comes in – if Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were included.

Those songs were released as a double A-side in January 1967 and it was felt that only unreleased tracks should be on the album for its release on 1st June.

Both songs formed the first-ever music video filmed at Knole Park near Sevenoaks in Kent – surprising for Northern Songs about their childhoods in Liverpool which is a large part of the Pepper concept album – with avant-garde colour film techniques.

An especially unusual mix as Strawberry Fields Forever was written in Almeria on the location of How I Won The War, and the Advanced Area cricket pitch, inspiring the famous Lennon granny glasses – and apt for Kent given the huge regeneration success of Southern Spain with numerous EU awards and the UAL Group new universities from Almeria, Cordoba, Huelva etc.

http://cms.ual.es/UAL/planestrategico/index.htm

The song and Almeria even inspiring the film Living is Easy With Eyes Closed... winner of the Goyas and Academy Award selection.

Just 5 years after their first Abbey Road recordings Sergeant Pepper marked a pinnacle for the Beatles and the dominance of British rock music that has never been relinquished.

And it cemented UK from the Carnaby St era onwards as the heart of cutting-edge Fashion and Art.

http://tinyurl.com/hcc5xhs

And what an album if the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, for the Our World first global broadcast, had recorded All You Need is Love a few weeks earlier.

The album sold 5.1M in USA and is still the third highest-selling album and regularly rated the best album ever. Perhaps only ever bettered by Pet Sounds or Exile on Main St.

How foolish if UK and Kent fail to deliver on that success from 1st June the 50th Anniversary next year.

Pepper with the salty tang of the seaside, if you will

While Margate and Ramsgate in their seaside town variety shows regularly hosted Kent's Beatles and Kent's Rolling Stones – again all unremarked.

The Kent Police Brass Band – the Blue Blowers – are tuning up to celebrate Sgt Pepper with the relaunch of the Grade 1 listed Victorian Eastcliff Bandstand – one of the world’s only polished-cement dancefloors.

The uniforms are being tailored to replicate the Pepperland band uniforms (prima donna demands are in hand already for Thai silk not satin, and an extra bottle of whisky and a crate of Heineken rider, and concerns over the tonguing for Lovely Rita Meter Maid given the policeman’s fear of the parking ticket) but there’s one ingredient missing...

...Often overlooked in the success of the Beatles, is the star of the first full Pepper song...

...The one and only Billy Shears...

...The star of A Hard Day’s Night and Help with his magic ring...

...Liverpool’s finest railway man...

..The only British Spaghetti Western star with Blindman...

...The star of the best rock and roll film ever in That’ll Be The Day – produced by ASEAN Trade Minister and the Killing Fields’ David Puttnam...

...Putting the Ludwig into Beethoven and rolling over and telling Tchaikosky the news...

...The hardest working man in British showbusiness – eight days a week...

...A backbeat that you just can’t lose – even in a Yellow Submarine or the Octopus’ garden...